Saturday, February 22, 2014

Those who do not farm in California’s Central Valley
probably think they are ok, that their economic well being will not be affected
if that area continues to suffer from the devastating
draught in that area. They are
wrong.

California Farming

Yes the residents will be among the hardest hit.

Less than a month ago, Mr. Sumner and other experts estimated
that 300,000 acres of rich farmland in the region would go unplanted. Now, he
has nearly doubled that estimate.

“I haven’t learned anything yet that
tells me it is less severe than we might have hoped,” he said.

The drought could translate into an
$11 billion loss in annual state revenue from agriculture, according to theCalifornia Farm
Water Coalition, an industry advocacy group. And in the Central Valley, where farming and food processing provide
nearly 40 percent of all jobs, the most acute pain is most likely to be felt
among low-level employees, who scrape by with seasonal work.

But unless you are someone who does not purchase food, well,
you will also see economic harm.

As for relief, the options are limited and of course
Republicans are not helping, as usual.

But with Republicans in the House
pushing instead for an overhaul of environmental protections of the delta,
there are few immediate solutions in sight for the Central Valley, a massive
stretch of land in the middle of the state that provides nearly half of the
nation’s produce. State officials have already said that they will not be able
to offer any water to the farmers through California’s vast network of canals. And
federal officials are expected to announce that their web of reservoirs will
not provide any water this year either, leaving thousands of farmers to rely
exclusively on private wells.

And no, no one can say that this is the result of global
warming, of excessive dumping of carbon into the atmosphere, of mismanagement
of the environment. But gosh, doesn’t it
sort of lean that way? And doesn’t it
mean that maybe, just maybe doing something about climate change other than
calling it a liberal plot for government to take over the world just might
help? This is critical, do any of us
want to see the effects of Rush Limbaugh not getting enough to eat?

Friday, February 21, 2014

While Maintaining State Paid for Health Care for Republican
Legislators

Arkansas
is a conservative state and it is also a state with a lot of relatively low income
individuals. So the fact that the
federal government would pay for expansion of Medicaid and provide health
care/insurance for thousands should have been welcome news. But Republicans blocked that so the state
sought and won approval to use the expansion funds to pay
for insurance for those individuals in the private health care insurance
market.

Not so fast.

The
Arkansas
House failed Tuesday to renew the state’s compromise Medicaid expansion plan, leaving in limbo a program
heralded as a model for Republican-leaning states to implement the federal
health overhaul. The 100-member chamber fell five votes short of the 75 needed
to reauthorize the “private option,” in which the state is using federal
Medicaid funds to buy private insurance for 87,000 low-income residents. The
program was approved last year as an alternative to expanding Medicaid
enrollment under the federal health law.

Here is the rationale of Republicans who are stopping this.

Majority Leader Bruce Westerman, however, said the vote would allow the
state to show its opposition to the Affordable Care Act.

Bruce could not be reached for further comment because he
was busy utilizing his state supported health care.

Kansas, which used to be the home of good old fashioned
decent, help-your-neighbor family values men and women has lately become the
bastion of all that is wrong in America politics. The state has put ultra radical conservatives
in charge and they are systematically wrecking state finances, education and
the like.

But Republicans are not the only irrational home wreckers in
the state. A Democratic legislator wants
to
allow beating children.

This
week, a Democratic lawmaker from Wichita
introduced a measure that would amend Kansas
law to allow parents, teachers and other adults to avoid child abuse
investigations or prosecutions after they wallop children hard enough to leave
bruises or red marks.

According to the Wichita Eagle, Rep. Gail
Finney, a 54-year-old mother of three grown sons, is hoping to “restore
parental rights” and “protect parents who spank their children from being
charged with child abuse.”

If
Finney’s amendment to current law is accepted — a dubious proposition —
acceptable corporal punishment would be defined as “up to ten forceful
applications in succession of a bare, open-hand palm against the clothed
buttocks of a child and any such reasonable physical force on the child as may
be necessary to hold, restrain or control the child in the course of
maintaining authority over the child, acknowledging that redness or bruising
may occur on the tender skin of a child as a result.”

Yes, just reading this bring a gag reflex to every decent person. And the wonderment of just what kind of
person would propose such a thing. Kansas, you can do
better, you can do a lot better, and we are pretty sure you couldn’t do worse
than Rep. Finney.

Thursday, February 20, 2014

The unrelenting attack
against Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana in
her re-election campaign by unlimited funding from folks like the Koch Brothers
features ads of Louisiana
citizens complaining of their health insurance costs and cancellation as a
result of the ACA.

The
ad shows a number of people, who appear to be Louisianans, opening their mail
to find a letter stating that their health care policy has been cancelled
because of the Affordable Care Act.

“Due
to the Affordable Care Act, your monthly premium has increased,” a voice-over
says in the ad as a man in a rural neighborhood
opens a cancellation letter and looks at his young daughter standing next to
him. “No longer covered, due to the Affordable Care Act.”

Or maybe these are not citizens.

But the
people in the emotion-evoking ad are not Louisianans at all; they are paid
actors.

Landrieu’s
support for the Affordable Care Act is a major sticking point in what promises
to be a tough reelection campaign for the three-term senator. And her campaign
is taking issue with the ad, characterizing its use of actors as “misleading”
and “low.”

“Hiring
professional actors to impersonate Louisiana
families is low even for the billionaire Koch brothers,” Friends of Mary
Landrieu Campaign Manager Adam Sullivan told ABC News. “If the Koch brothers
had even a shred of credibility before launching their latest misleading ad
campaign against Sen. Landrieu, they’ve surely lost it now.”

So are the infamous Koch Brothers and their stooges embarrassed
by all this, of course not.

Americans for
Prosperity is not backing down from the ad, with spokesman Levi Russell telling
ABC News that it’s no secret that the people in the ad are actors.

“I
think the viewing public is savvy enough to distinguish between someone giving
a personal story and something that is emblematic,” Russell said when reached
on the phone. “And we make it very clear when someone is giving a personal
testimonial.”

Russell
said the ad, in contrast to a “personal testimonial ad” that would use the
story of a real voter, is “cinematic” and meant to be a “representative of
Americans from all walks of life.”

After all, when one is using the wealth of billionaires to
work to deny basic health care to millions of low income people, using paid
actors to pretend they are real people is just chump change.

Wednesday, February 19, 2014

Lack of Growth in Middle America
is the Major Deterrent to a Strong Recovery

Data Confirms What Was Largely Suspected

Whenever reasonable people argue that the government must
adopt policy to improve economic opportunity for middle income Americans and to
develop policies that will direct the increases in economic incomes towards
middle income Americans conservatives of all stripe cry “socialism” or “communism”
or “income redistribution” or “class warfare”.
But the truth of the matter is that income growth in middle income
families is a critical component of creating economic growth for everyone.

Now new data is
confirming that the Great Recession was largely a great recession only for
lower and middle income families. The
wealthy did quite well.

More at the Top

The top 5 percent of earners accounted for almost 40 percent of personal consumption expenditures in 2012, up from 27 percent in 1992. Largely driven by this increase, consumption among the top 20 percent grew to more than 60 percent over the same period.

As
politicians and pundits in Washington continue
to spar over whether economic inequality is in fact deepening, in corporate America there
really is no debate at all. The post-recession reality is that the customer
base for businesses that appeal to the middle class is shrinking as the top
tier pulls even further away.

The result of course is that businesses which cater to the
wealthy are doing great and that businesses that did not cater to the wealth
that can change their practices are doing so.

In response
to the upward shift in spending, PricewaterhouseCoopers clients like big stores
and restaurants are chasing richer customers with a wider offering of high-end
goods and services, or focusing on rock-bottom prices to attract the expanding
ranks of penny-pinching consumers.

“As a
retailer or restaurant chain, if you’re not at the really high level or the low
level, that’s a tough place to be,” Mr. Maxwell said. “You don’t want to be
stuck in the middle.”

Does this matter?
Well yes, if one is employed by the large retailers like Sears, J. C.
Penney or even Target and Wal-Mart that are not in the luxury goods
businesses. Here’s what is happening
with their customer base.

In 2012, the
top 5 percent of earners were responsible for 38 percent of domestic
consumption, up from 28 percent in 1995, the researchers found.

Even more striking, the current
recovery has been driven almost entirely by the upper crust, according to Mr.
Fazzari and Mr. Cynamon. Since 2009, the year the recession ended,
inflation-adjusted spending by this top echelon has risen 17 percent, compared
with just 1 percent among the bottom 95 percent.

More broadly, about 90 percent of the
overall increase in inflation-adjusted consumption between 2009 and 2012 was
generated by the top 20 percent of households in terms of income, according to
the study, which was sponsored by the Institute for New EconomicThinking,
a research group in New York.

And as the retail giants slowly sink (Sears is already on a
death watch, they just don’t know it) so does the potential growth in the
economy.

But the wealthy don’t really care, do they? They got theirs, they are getting more and if
they can just get a few more tax cuts then to hell with everyone else. And if the economy tanks again, well no problem. It didnt' tank for them last time and given current governmental policies, both Democrat and Republican it won't tank for them in the future. So who cares?

Even though the 2014 midterm elections are nine months away,
after Republicans
set rules for the 2016 contest it is now pretty clear how it is going to
proceed.

The
package, which cleared the 168-member committee with just nine dissenting
votes, left Iowa and New Hampshire in the traditional roles of first caucus and
first primary, followed by South Carolina and Nevada nominating contests, all
in February. Other states are allowed to hold their primaries and caucuses
starting on March 1.

After
the first two weeks in March, states can hold winner-take-all elections, which
will deliver large troves of delegates and are intended to yield a prospective
nominee early in the process. States that violate the new rules would forfeit
most of their delegates and alternates to the national convention.

So here is what is going to happen.

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul will win the Iowa caucuses by a huge margin. This is
because of the legacy of his father’s organization and the outright craziness
of Iowa Republicans. In New Hampshire
the establishment forces will rally around NJ Gov. Christie or former Florida
Gov. Jeb Bush or Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker wo is the default establishment candidate if they run, and Mr. Paul will finish a respectable second. In South Carolina
Mr. Paul will have another big win, setting up the Florida primary for the deciding factor.

In Florida
the race will be between Mr. Paul, favorite son Sen. Marco Rubio, favorite son
Jeb Bush and if he runs, the favorite of the northeast transplants Mr. Christie. The betting here, Mr. Paul ekes out a
victory, the race is over and Rand Paul becomes the de facto Republican
nominee.

Tuesday, February 18, 2014

The federal judge who ruled that Virginia’s ban on same sex
marriage, much like its previous ban on inter-racial marriage violated the
equal protection clause of the 14th amendment because there is no
rational basis for the ban is
quite a person.

Her background is that of an individual who is deeply religious and one with a
long career as a legal officer in the navy, experience as a prosecutor and as a
public defender. And no, no Harvard or
Yale education here.

Two aspects of a Washington Post story about her stand
out. The first one involved an
individual convicted of exploiting a child for sexual purposes who claimed he
needed religion not jail.

Wright Allen seemed to show little empathy for a man
convicted in a child-pornography case. The man, who had been accused of luring
underage girls into making lurid videos, told the judge that he didn’t need
jail. “All I need is the Lord, some good Christian fellowship and my family,”
he said.

Given her background one might have expected leniency
here. One would be wrong.

The other interesting thing is the reaction of a radical
conservative legislator in Virginia.

The ruling prompted Del.
Robert G. Marshall (R-Prince William), co-author of the ban, to call for the
judge’s impeachment.

“Legislating through the courts against the will of the
people is lawless disregard for our representative form of government,” Marshall said in a speech
on the House of Delegates floor.

As noted in the article and elsewhere like Slate, 32 judges
in 18 decisions have all reached the same conclusion as Judge Wright
Allen. No one has reached the opposite
conclusion. Does Del. Marshall wish to impeach the entire
federal and state judiciary?

And of course the ignorance of Del. Marshall here shines
brightly, mainly that the Virginia Assembly cannot impeach a federal
judge. But this man is probably too
ignorant to care about his ignorance.

Despite cries of victory the marriage equality battle is not
yet won. There are at least four Supreme
Court Justices who would vote to not only bar marriage equality but who would
also vote to deny any rights to gay and lesbian couples, to prohibit their
actions, to put them in jail for being gay and lesbians and probably to allow
the states to torture them should they wish to do so (although to be fair
Justices Thomas and Scalia would probably say they were personally opposed to
torturing gay and lesbians but that the people of a state had the right to vote
to do so should they so choose and that the Court should not let the personal
view of individual Justices who opposed such torture over-rule the law.)

Monday, February 17, 2014

While at one time there may have been a justification for the
Olympic Games, today they are just another excess, another source of
entertainment, another diversion of resources from productive to unproductive
uses. So here are other things.

NFL
Commissioner Roger Goodell reported earned $44 million last year from
making the NFL extremely profitable.
Did we mention the NFL is a tax exempt organization?

In Minnesota the
Democratic Governor is enjoying very high approval ratings. This is in spite (or maybe because ) of
a tax increase on wealthy citizens and approval of gay marriage.

With
Jeb Bush dithering on whether or not to run for President the
establishment types in the Republican Party are turning to Wisconsin Gov.
Scott Walker. Thanks public
employee unions for raising his profile by your disastrous recall campaign.

Will
the U. S.
allow Comcast and Time Warner Cable to merge and create a huge
cable/entertainment company. Of
course, what’s the problem. Those
who accuse the Obama Administration of being anti-business don’t know the
facts. Those who accuse the Obama
Administration of being anti-consumer do know the facts.

Paul
Krugman points
everyone to economist Greg Mankiw who defends the compensation of the
1%. According to Mankiw they deserve it for the great job they do in allocating capital resources to productive uses. Yeah, those financial geniuses
who were the major cause of the Great Recession.

The
most hated Republican in Washington
is Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, that is most hated by other Republicans.

John
McCain can’t understand why sending aid to anti-American zealots in the
Syrian civil war would be harmful.
He points the U. S.
role in Iraq
as an example. Really, we are not
making this up.

Sen.
Mike Lee (R, Ut) has blasted the President for delaying implementation of
parts of health care reform. Sen.
Lee is an ardent opponent of the reform and fought to delay implementation. So exactly why he is opposed to
the President delaying implementation is a mystery only Sen. Lee can
solve, or not. And apparently the news media which reports this sort of thing has forgotten that delaying implementation of health care reform was a major
Republican policy initiative, at least until the President actually did
it.

On gay
marriage Mitt Romney has said "It's going to take a long, long time
to determine whether having gay marriage will make it less likely for kids
to be raised in settings where there's a mom and a dad,". Exactly how and why that would come
about is not clear, not evident and not even logical. Just another example of why even the
harshest critics of Pres. Obama are not saying the country would have been
better off with Mitt.

In Georgia
the gun nuts want to make it okay for persons to bring their guns to the
airport. Gosh, what could go wrong
there, nothing bad has ever happened with guns and air travel before.

Sunday, February 16, 2014

A federal judge in Virginia ruled the way every court has ruled since the Supreme Court ruled in Windsor that same sex couples legally married
in state that recognizes marriage must be recognized as married by the federal
government. That judge joined 17 other
court ruling in determining that there was no rational basis, no reason other
than hatred and prejudice for a state to ban same sex marriage.

That’s right, there have been 18 ruling and all 18 have been
against the bigotry and hatred of conservatives. So who exactly is on the wrong side here, the bigots or the 32 individual judges in these decisions of all political positions appointed by President of all the different philosophies?

The ruling prompted Del. Robert G. Marshall
(R-Prince William), co-author of the ban, to call for the judge’s impeachment
in a speech on the House floor.

“Legislating through the courts against the
will of the people is lawless disregard for our representative form of
government,” Marshall
said.

Del. Thomas “Tommy” C. Wright Jr.
(R-Lunenburg) rose on the House floor as well to declare that marriage was
created for “the purpose of procreation.”

“Legislatures can pass the laws they want to.
Judges can make the rules they want to. The law of God will stand,” he said to
applause anda whistle from the Republican side.

The disappointment of course is that, is this the best the
opposition can do? Really are they so
completely out of coherent arguments for their position that they cannot even
muster the pretense of supporting their opposition to marriage equality with
even a tiny bit of rationale?

But okay Del. Tommy Wright, here’s a deal. Let the same sex couples enter into
loving, productive satisfying marriages (and divorces) and they will be happy
to deal with the consequences in the after life. The question of course though, what about your
bigotry and hatred Del. Wright, are you prepared to deal with the consequences
in the afterlife if you are judged?

A few weeks ago, before the storm of the century, or at
least the storm of the month trapped everyone inside for like a day the Wall
Street Journal ran an opinion piece by someone named Tom Perkins. Mr. Perkins was horrified that anyone would
criticize billionaires whom the critics felt paid less in taxes than they
should have. Mr. Perkins took this basic
political argument and strongly hinted that it was akin to the Nazi attacks on
Jewish business on what has become known as Krystallnacht (the shattering of
the glass windows of Jewish owned businesses).

Now Mr. Perkins is entitled to say what he thinks, and quite
frankly everyone should be glad that he has honestly stated what many if not
most of his fellow plutocrats believe, that taxing them is akin to being
Nazis. And until now no comment was
needed as others had nicely exposed this man for what he is. But according to this
report in Politico Mr. Perkins is apologizing for his remarks.

Again,
Perkins apologized for using
the word “Kristallnacht” in his Wall Street Journal comparison of the 1 percent
to the persecution of the Jews in Nazi Germany, but maintained that the
parallel still holds.

“I
spilled a little more blood than I planned. But I’m not sorry I did it,” he
said.

Now we are not certain how the statement “I’m not sorry I
did it” qualifies as an apology but in the spirit of things on behalf of all
of the people who have called Mr. Perkins a terrible, awful, nasty person we
apologize and will say we are not sorry they did it.

There, everyone feel better?

One other point. In the same comments Mr. Perkins apparently called for everyone to get the number of votes to be equal to what they paid in taxes. Pay a million dollars in taxes, your vote counts for a million votes. This upset a lot of people who failed to understand that Mr. Perkins was making a joke, making fun of them by showing how they are unable to separate out the serious from the silly. So our messge to our liberal friends is "get a sense of humor". Just because the otherside is dour doesn't mean you have to be so also.

Saturday, February 15, 2014

The contrast between what conservatives say and how they act
is on the center stage in North Carolina where
a Federal Appeals court has
ruled that no, the state of North
Carolina cannot allow just one side of the abortion
rights debate to be on the license plates.

What Tar Heel Residents really need to do is choose a more rational legislature

The ruling is the third time one of the Republican-led
General assembly’s anti-abortion laws has been struck down over the past three
years.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit
ruled in a 3-0 opinion written by Judge James Wynn of North Carolina.

“Chief
amongst the evils the First Amendment prohibits are government ‘restrictions
distinguishing among different speakers, allowing speech by some but not
others,’” Wynn wrote, quoting an unrelated U.S. Supreme Court decision. “In
this case, North Carolina
seeks to do just that: privilege speech on one side of the hotly debated issue
— reproductive choice — while silencing opposing voices.”

Personally we fail to understand why it is that
anti-abortion rights groups, or any advocacy group for that matter feel that by
having their positon advertised on a license plate will change anyone’s
views. Do they really think that someone
driving down the road who is an ardent abortion rights supporter will see a
license plate that says ‘choose life’ and so completely change their views?

Friday, February 14, 2014

The Disgusting and the Despicable – That’s Republican
Attitudes Towards Basic Employee RightsUpdate: In a relatively close vote the VW workers voted against forming a union. This may have been due to the embedded dislike of unions in the area or the economic intimidation of government. The benefit here is that Republicans who espouse keeping government from interfering in business activity have been exposed for the hypcrites they are.

The right of workers in America to unionize was gained
after a long and sometimes bloody fight.
Those opposed to unionization saw no reason not to use government, and
sometimes government troops and government inspired and supported violence to
put down the union movement. But in America we
cherish rights, including the right to organize. So now workers have the right to vote to be
represented by a union. It seems like
basic democracy in action.

But Republicans hate unions, hate the fact that labor has a
voice. And so with an upcoming vote in Tennessee on whether or
not to unionize a VW plant, Republicans in high government positions have flat
out told the workers that if they exercise their basic right to vote in a union
government
will punish them with harm to the local economy.

State Senator Bo Watson, who represents a suburb of Chattanooga, warned on
Monday that if VW’s workers voted to embrace the U.A.W., the
Republican-controlled Legislature might vote against approving future
incentives to help the plant expand.

“The members of the Tennessee
Senate will not view unionization as in the best interest of Tennessee,” Mr. Watson said at a news
conference. He added that a pro-U.A.W. vote would make it “exponentially more
challenging” for the legislature to approve future subsidies.

A loss of such incentives, industry
analysts say, could persuade Volkswagen to award production of a new S.U.V. to
its plant in Mexico instead
of to the Chattanooga
plant, which currently assembles the Passat.

And no this is not the ranting of a crazed local radical, it
is a position supported by the Republican Senator and Governor.

At a
news conference on Tuesday, United States Senator Bob Corker, a former mayor of
Chattanooga and
a Republican, also called on VW employees to reject the union. He called it “a
Detroit-based organization” whose key to survival was to organize plants in the
South. . . .

Concerned that a U.A.W. victory would hurt Tennessee’s business climate, Gov. Bill Haslam has warned
that auto parts suppliers might decide against locating in Chattanooga because they might not want to
set up near a unionized VW plant.

And one interesting aspect of the issue is that the employer
is on the side of, well on the side of democracy and worker’s rights.

“Our works councils are key to our success and
productivity,” said Frank Fischer, Volkswagen Chattanooga’s chief executive and chairman.
“It is a business model that helped to make Volkswagen the second-largest car
company in the world. Our plant in Chattanooga
has the opportunity to create a uniquely American works council, in which the
company would be able to work cooperatively with our employees and ultimately
their union representatives, if the employees decide they wish to be
represented by a union.”

This is in large part because in Germany companies see workers as an
asset, as partners, as men and women who are integral to the operations and
profitability of the company. In Germany the
labor force is heavily unionized and the economy is extremely successful.

Of course for Republicans that is a terrible situation, and
if the economy has to suffer so that they can get their way on unions, too
bad. After all, none of the government
officials fighting basic decency and democracy are in any danger of losing
their fantastic government jobs.

And what about conservative principles that say government should stay out of business matters in the private sector, that if a company and its workers want to enter into an arrangement that is satisfactory to both parties government has no role? Like all conservative principles they melt in the face of the heat of hypocrisy.

Thursday, February 13, 2014

A big difference between Republican legislators and
Republican Governors is that Governors must actually govern, while legislators
simply pontificate. This explains why
Republican members of Congress and of state legislators say and do and vote for
a bunch of loony ideas. The ideas almost
never get implemented, and if they do there are a bunch of other loony
legislators to blame so the blame is diluted.

But Governors must actually do things. So in many states, even states that are rock
ribbed Republican, once in office the Governors do sometimes support good
policies. (Okay, not people like Rick
Perry of Texas,
but he is a southerner and the rules are as strong there). Case in point is the position taken by Tennessee’s Republican
Governor Bill Haslam, who supports
universal public education going beyond high school and continuing through
two years of community college.

Public
colleges have sharply raised their prices since the 1990s in the face of
declining state support, but a plan by Tennessee’s
governor to make two years of community college and technical school free for
all students represents a striking reversal of that trend.

Tennessee
would be the only state in the country to charge no tuition or fees to incoming
students under the proposal by Gov. Bill Haslam, a Republican, which policy
analysts called a big step toward a better-educated work force.

“This
is the best idea to boost participation in higher education in a generation,”
said Terry W. Hartle, senior vice president of the American Council on
Education, a major association of public and private colleges.

Mr.
Haslam made it the centerpiece of his State of the State
address on Monday, calling for two years of free schooling for
state residents with high school diplomas or equivalency degrees, without
regard to academic credentials or financial need. The change requires approval
by the state legislature, whose leaders reacted favorably to the idea.

It is hard to find a better idea in government these days,
and hard to find one that is more likely to be opposed by hard line conservatives. Right now a high school education is an
entitlement, everyone in America
is entitled to a free public education through the 12th grade. That entitlement itself is hated by
conservatives, after all it’s not in the Constitution and is being paid for by
taxpayers. The idea of adding 2 more
years to the entitlement must surely drive them bonkers.

But for the rest of the population, the sane and rational
group this is a fantastic concept.
Congrats Gov. Haslam, you have our vote.

Given the quality of the flights on US Air that airline is
not one that any locality wants to attract.
But Pittsburgh did and in order to have
US Air treat Pittsburgh as a hub local and state
government made
a massive investment in the PittsburghAirport.

Pittsburgh
once was one of the biggest hubs in US Airways' route network, with the current
airport built as a popular and state-of-the-art facility built largely to
accommodate US
Airways' needs.

"Allegheny County officials borrowed more than $900
million to build Pittsburgh International Airport in the early 1990s, largely
to US Airways' specifications, but two bankruptcies in the early 2000s prompted
the airline to close its hub, slash more than 500 daily flights, and gut a
workforce that surpassed 12,000. Today it hovers around 1,800."

So now what is happening?
Oh, this

US
Airways footprint in Pittsburgh
continues to shrink.

That latest came when US
Airways announced last week that it will close its 6-year old flight operations
center in Pittsburgh.
US
Airways is making the move as part of its merger consolidation with American
Airlines, which already has a flight operations center near its Dallas/Fort
Worth headquarters.

US Airways says most of the 600 employees at the Pittsburgh center will be given the option to relocate to Texas, though it
acknowledged it doesn't expect all of them to do so. Those who chose not to go
will be given a severance package, spokesman Todd Lehmacher tells thePittsburgh Post-Gazette.

And everybody should remember that this merger was blessed
by the Feds, looking out for everyone and trying to help the economy.

Wednesday, February 12, 2014

Whenever one is tempted to regard Conservatism as a serious
and realistic political philosophy one should be reminded of this
story about the late Shirley Temple Black.

1. The U.S. government thought she might be a communist. When she was 10.

Most people in FDR's administration thought accusations that Shirley Temple was a Communist leader in Hollywood an opportunity for jokes more than worry. As an article in the Milwaukee Journal in December 1938 states,under the subhed"The Shirley Temple Communist Episode,"

Then came the Shirley Temple episode, wherein Witness J.B. Matthews, former national chairman of the American League for Peace and Democracy, testified communistic organs were using famous people as decoys. Among these, he said, was Shirley Temple.

"Perhaps it was fortunate that Shirley Temple was born an American," tee-heed Mme. Secretary Perkins.

"They're trying to hamstring and discredit the investigation," yelled Dies. But there does seem to be general agreement now that the committee's early work was pretty shoddy.

Four years earlier, the people who pulled the strings in Hollywood got Temple -- 5 years old -- to endorse a candidate running against well-known socialist Upton Sinclair, making the accusations of communism even odder. As recounted in the Australian Financial Review:

Hollywood entered the electoral process in earnest during the 1934 California gubernatorial race in which avowed socialist Upton Sinclair was running for the Democratic Party under the slogan "End Poverty In California". His commitment to wealth redistribution terrified Hollywood moguls who mobilised their studios and actors to defeat him. America's darling, Shirley Temple, sat on the knee of Republican Governor Frank Merriam and said that if she had a vote she would be "sticking with the boss".

Greg Mitchell, who wrote a book about the Sinclair campaign, adds, "And so a lifetime as a key Republican was set by, or for, Shirley Temple. When she ran for Congress in 1967, her campaign managers, the legendary team of Clem Whitaker and Leone Baxter, were the same pair who helped thwart Upton Sinclair in 1934."

Arizona
could be called the birthing place of the post war American conservative
movement. In the 1950’s Senator Barry
Goldwater of that state became a leading national conservative voice, and his attempt
at the Presidency in 1964, while unsuccessful encouraged conservative to become
far more active in national politics.
This culminated with the elections of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush.

The basis of modern conservatism is dislike, distrust and
hatred of government, and policy menu that attempts to destroy, defund or
de-legitimize every aspect of government.
So it is heartening, indeed gratifying to see that in the heart of
conservative country the government of the state of Arizona
and the city of Phoenixhave
ended homelessness with respect to veterans.

John Hankins, right, who repaired intercontinental ballistic missiles for the Air Force, played chess with William Godwin as Gary Workman watched. All three veterans were considered chronically homeless but are now living in Victory Place, an apartment complex in Phoenix.Samantha Sais for The New York Times

In
2011, by a city count, there were 222 chronically homeless veterans here, a
vulnerable, hard-to-reach population of mostly middle-age men, virtually all
battling some type of physical or mental ailment along with substance abuse.
Federal and city officials acknowledged that was not an exact number, but it is
widely regarded as the best measure of the veteran population.

Last
month, the last 41 members of that group were placed in temporary housing.
Shane Groen, a director at the Arizona Coalition to End Homelessness, one of
the city’s partners in the program, said the goal was to have them all in
permanent housing by Feb. 14.

Wow, congratulations to Phoenix.
And yes, thanks for showing that government programs can work, are
needed and cannot be replaced by the private sector.

Tuesday, February 11, 2014

For almost all of us the Civil War is not and has not been a
major issue in our lifetime. It is an
interesting and incredibly impactful historical event, one that still reverberates in today’s political
issues, but as far as the Civil War itself is concerned, the issues in that
fight were settled long ago.

But some people, men and women who for some unfathomable
reason believe that the Civil War was a majestic enterprise of the South, the
War is not over. And in a state park in Florida the die hard
defenders of southern honor are
still at it. The issue, whether or
not to put a memorial to the Union troops in a battlefield park.

Union forces lost the Battle of Olustee on Feb. 20, 1864. The battlefield in North Florida is now home to one of the largest Civil War re-enactments in the Southeast.Kurz & Allison lithograph, via Florida Photographic Collection

Last
year, nearly a century and a half after the Battle
of Olustee, the Florida
chapter of the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War made a request to the
state parks department. It asked for permission to place an obelisk to honor
Union soldiers (who lost the battle on Feb. 20, 1864) inside the three-acreOlustee
Battlefield Historic State Park, the same patch of land that holds
three monuments commemorating Confederate soldiers.

Okay, a simple enough request. There were already three monuments in the
part to Confederate soldiers. But even
acknowledging Union bravery and casualties was too much for the Confederate
supporting diehards.

Last month, opposition to the
monument exploded during a state parks workshop in nearby LakeCity.
Before a crowd packed into a school auditorium, a black advocate for the
Confederacy (from out of state) waved a Confederate flag. Confederate
supporters rose quickly to their feet and belted out “Dixie.”
Speaker after speaker denounced the Union proposal.

“There are
some, apparently, who consider this to be a lengthy truce and believe that the
war is still going on,” said Mr. Custer, known as Buck.

The
Confederate demands were clear. The Union monument could be built anywhere in
the federal park, just not on the original three-acre state park where the
United Daughters of the Confederacy erected their obelisk in 1912. “We are not
opposed to the monument at all; we are opposed to the location, and here is why
— it’s like any other historical building,” said James S. Davis, 66, the Florida division
commander for the Sons of Confederate Veterans. “You put something brand new in
there and it destroys the significance of it.”

And in the leadership of the opposition,

Reinforcements were drafted, namely State Representative Dennis Baxley,
the Republican chairman of the House Judiciary Committee and a member of the
Sons of Confederate Veterans.

Gosh, a Republican leading the fight to glorify the cause of
the South, who saw that coming?

There is a lot of controversy about the Civil War, but one
thing that is agreed upon is that it was a war fought to end slavery and
preserve the Union. Those who support the Southern heritage
aspect of this should remember they are fighting to honor those who fought to
destroy the United States
and perpetuate slavery. Maybe they ought to
think about that before the next time they say and do something stupid.

According to his petition, he had $400 in his checking
account and $400 in savings. He lives in a rental apartment at 151st Street and
Broadway. He owns clothing he estimated was worth $900 and his only jewelry is
a Concord
watch, which he described as “broken.”

Oh dear, another poor and destitute, uneducated and
unemployed worker in America. Not so fast.

The
silver-haired, distinguished-looking Mr. Owens would seem the embodiment of a
successful Wall Street lawyer. A graduate of DenisonUniversity and VanderbiltLawSchool,
Mr. Owens moved to New York City
and was named a partner at the then old-line law firm of Dewey, Ballantine,
Bushby, Palmer & Wood, and after a merger, at Dewey & LeBoeuf.

Today, Mr. Owens, 55, is a partner at
an even more eminent global law firm, White & Case. A partnership there or
any of the major firms collectively known as “Big Law” was long regarded as the
brass ring of the profession, a virtual guarantee of lifelong prosperity and
job security.

It turns out the poor man just cannot get by on an annual salary of
$355,000 a year. And of course he would
rather stiff his creditors than touch his rather massive retirement account.

Mr. Owens has been well paid by most standards, but not compared with
top partners at major firms, who make in the millions. (Mr. Pierce was
guaranteed $8 million a year at Dewey & LeBoeuf.) When Mr. Owens first
became a partner at Dewey, Ballantine, he made about $250,000, in line with
other new partners. At Dewey & LeBoeuf, his income peaked at over $500,000
during the flush years before the financial crisis. In 2012, he made $351,000,
and last year, while at White & Case, he made $356,500. He listed his
current monthly income as $31,500, or $375,000 a year. And he has just over $1
million in retirement accounts that are protected from creditors in bankruptcy.

And his legal specialty, mergers and acquisition where
presumably one must know at least a little about finance. But apparently not.

It turns out that some of Mr. Owens’ problem is not entirely
of his own making.

The bulk of his potential liabilities stem from claims related to thecollapse of Dewey & LeBoeuf,
which filed for bankruptcy protection in 2012. Even stripping those away, his
financial circumstances seem dire. Legal fees from a divorce depleted his
savings and resulted in a settlement under which he pays his former wife a
steep $10,517 a month in alimony and support for their 11-year-old son.

That’s right, some judge has decided that his wife and son
are entitled to $10,500 a month in income in order to ‘live’. And they probably think they are entitled to
more, after all that’s probably a lot less than their friends have. Yep Mitt Romney, the Owens’s family, the
embodiment of a sense of entitlement in America. Too bad you weren’t able to feature them in
your speeches and commercials.

The egregious columnist for the Washington Post, George Will
writes
about the legal challenge to health care reform and it is not hard to read
the glee in his tone at the possibility that a legal technicality may upend
part of the law.

Scott Pruitt and some kindred spirits might accelerate the
ACA’s collapse by blocking another of the Obama administration’s lawless uses of the Internal Revenue Service.
Pruitt was elected Oklahoma’s attorney general by promising to defend states’
prerogatives against federal encroachment, and today he and some properly
litigious people elsewhere are defending a state prerogative that the ACA
explicitly created. If they succeed, the ACA’s disintegration will accelerate.

The problem is that one reading of the law is that insurance
subsidies may only be available with state run exchanges, and Republicans in
many states blocked creating those exchanges because, well because they saw
their role in government as preventing people from getting low cost health
insurance and access to health care. So
the law has a fallback position, namely Federally created exchanges.

It is not clear that the restrictive interpretation of the
ruling will prevail, and it is largely a result of sloppy drafting by the Obama
folks, proving once again how terrible these people are at the actual practice
of governing. Mr. Will seems to think
health care reform will die if this part of the law is found to be unworkable. But what is more likely to happen is anger and resentment against
Republicans.

The reason for this is that while a majority may not like
the health care reform law, after a while tens of millions of people will have
health care insurance and taking that away from those people is not going to be
politically popular. It will of course
take decades before Republicans give up on their opposition. After all it was only yesterday that they
accepted Social Security. The fight to kill Medicare and replace it with an
unworkable plan that places the cost of health care on the elderly and
impoverishes them, that is the system we had before Medicare, is still alive
and will be so for decades. Like the factions in the Balkans, they never forget, never forgive and forever live in the glorious past.

As for Mr. Will, who undoubtedly has great health care and
great insurance, well, let’s just let him bask in his hope of denying that to
others. It may be that is all he lives
for.

Sunday, February 9, 2014

While the following concept is not original with this Forum, it is
central to the thesis of this Forum.
That concept is this, that one of the best, if not the best measure of
intellect is the degree of uncertainty with which one holds one’s views. The more certain one is that he or she is
absolutely correct, the less thoughtful, the less studious and the less
intellectually honest is that person.

In an opinion piece in the New York Time, Simon Critchley
illustrates this concept as well as it can be done. He
is writing about a landmark public television show of 40 years ago, a show
where scientist Jacob Bronowski examined man and evolution and culture. Here is Mr. Critchley’s take after watching a section on Mr. Bronowski confronting the Holocaust in which he lost much of his family.

The
play of tolerance opposes the principle of monstrous certainty that is endemic
to fascism and, sadly, not just fascism but all the various faces of
fundamentalism. When we think we have certainty, when we aspire to the
knowledge of the gods, then Auschwitz can
happen and can repeat itself. Arguably, it has repeated itself in the genocidal
certainties of past decades.

The
pursuit of scientific knowledge is as personal an act as lifting a paintbrush
or writing a poem, and they are both profoundly human. If the human condition
is defined by limitedness, then this is a glorious fact because it is a moral
limitedness rooted in a faith in the power of the imagination, our sense of
responsibility and our acceptance of our fallibility. We always have to acknowledge
that we might be mistaken. When we forget that, then we forget ourselves and
the worst can happen.

While this applies to fundamentalists and activists of all
stripes, think about how applicable this is to conservatives. Think about Rush Limbaugh as an example, a
commentator who brooks no uncertainty, that he and he alone is the source of
truth and that never ever can what he think be contradicted. As a result he is constantly and consistently
wrong and morally and intellectually offensive.

Now there are those who may seek to turn this against the
allies of modern science. They may ask,
doesn’t the principle that all is uncertain mean that one does not have to
believe in evolution, that one could believe that God does not want
couples to use contraception, that lowering taxes on the wealthy pays for
itself, etc. But the answer to that is simple,
show us the data.

If someone believes that Noah’s flood created the Grand Canyon about 8,000 years ago, fine, show us the
evidence and refute our evidence. If
someone believes that cutting taxes on the wealthy increases tax revenues fine,
produce the models and the research. If
someone believes that creating further deprivation among the low income groups
will stimulate those groups and help them leave poverty, great, just prove it
or at least demonstrate how that has worked in the past. If someone believes that increasing the
monetary base always leads to inflation, explain why that didn’t happen in
2008-13.

The great failure of conservatives is their refusal to place
their view under the microscope of science and logic and analysis and their
refusal to change their beliefs when knowledge and information contradict those
beliefs. As holders of beliefs based on
faith rather than intellect, they fail any test of truth. And the sad part, this failure takes millions
with them.

Saturday, February 8, 2014

At a bail hearing for Curtis Reeves, Jr., a Florida man about whom
there is no question that he pulled his gun and killed a man in the movies who
was texting before the picture started, his
attorney said this.

Curtis Reeves'
attorney, Richard Escobar, argued there's no need for him to put up assets for
bail, saying he is a lifelong resident and married for 46 years as well as a
decorated law enforcement officer.

"He has never had a shooting as a law
enforcement officer is his entire career," Escobar said. "This is an
individual of personal responsibility, an individual of integrity. He is a churchgoing
man. There is absolutely no reason to believe Mr. Reeves is a danger to anyone
in this community and any other community."

He also said the enhanced video shows Reeves was
hit by a hand and a cell phone.

"This is not a throwing popcorn case
only," he said. "This is throwing a deadly missile case."

And no, there is no evidence that the attorney broke down
into hysterical laughter as he was saying it. And who knew that cell phone's were a deadly missile case? Will they now fall under the gun lobby protection. (And no, there is no visual evidence or witnesses that anything other than maybe popcorn was thrown. Of course throwing popcorn at someone verbally accosting a movie goer is a capital offense.)

So apparently in Florida
a person of “personal responsibility” and “an individual of integrity” is
characterized as someone who takes a gun to a movie and kills another
patron. And that is certainly no reason
to believe he is a danger to anyone, after all he goes to church on Sunday (kills on Monday?)

The judge in the case has denied bail. So at least part of Florida is not insane. This is great news, because this is Florida and Mr. Reeves may well be acquitted, with a jury blaming his victim for daring to go to the movies with his wife at the same time as Mr. Reeves went to the movies with his wife. So by denying bail this murderer will have served at least some time in jail. And of course this is really the victim's fault, he was unarmed and anyone who goes unarmed to a movie certainly deserves to be killed.

The mistake Mr. Reeves made of course was not shooting an
African American teenager. In that case
he would have been a hero to conservatives and the gun lobby. And if that person had been wearing a hoodie,
well Mr. Reeves would be free to go on Fox News and be acclaimed a paragon of
virtue.